Tria Fata

Yesterday, I was invited to speak at the Weber State University's Arts and Humanities Scholarship Banquet in recognition of those students who had received scholarship and the generous donors who had made these possible. Although I speak in public regularly as Editor-in-Chief of our university's undergraduate literary journal, Metaphor, I felt nervous for two reasons. The first is that I hadn't timed my speech and was afraid of going long. The second is that I had been instructed to "keep it light," but thinking about the unexpected and much needed generousity of investments I've received to complete my education fills me with gratitude and I usually get a little teary. Thankfully, I didn't. I even got a few laughs from the crowd.

After the students had spoken, we were blessed by another unexpected gift. The WSU ensemble of music majors called Tria Fata filled the room with delightful music. This group has the beautiful chemistry. They have choreographed their music and facial expressions in a way that the notes become a conversation between instruments and artists. It was delightful! And intense, visionary, moving, and inspiring. The musicians poured so much of themselves into the movement that they were a little out of breath and perspiring by the end. Tremendous!

Sadly, we learned at the end of the Banquet that this trio is breaking up to move on to other programs and musical adventures. This was disappointing in many ways. I was hoping for a CD. I'd like to take a moment to wish them all well. Samuel Runolfson (cellist), Kathryn Palkki (violinist) and Nicholas Maghaun (pianist) have exciting careers ahead of them, I'm sure. Good luck to you all. Spread the purple everywhere!

Under the Greenwood Tree (2005)

A period drama based on the book by Thomas Hardy, turns sensibility on its head as we watch Fancy Day return from a life of upper-class education to her hometown. Her mother had married "down" and lost all claim to her family's fortune. So, her father has aspired to give her the education and gentility required to marry into the wealthier class. But, he doesn't foresee the affect the storekeeper's son, Dick Dewey, will have on her nor the affect her coming will have on the entire town.

Peer pressure is something that will always be a factor in our choices, but the choices women had for them in earlier time periods were greatly limited. Fancy is educated and holds a position as the village teacher. This independence combined with her unusual circumstances of station - riding the fence, so to speak - affords her the opportunity to decline several offers of marriage in favor of LOVE.

The irony here is that, so many of these period works that are so popular today glorify the ideal of marrying for love instead of money or station and, now how many people divorce because the "love" doesn't live up to expectations? It waxes and wanes, but doesn't seem able to grow again during times when stress and distance stretch before us.

There is a moment in the movie, when Mr. Dewey asks his wife if she had been happy with him because he was never an ambitious man and hadn't expanded their business or improved their fortunes as his son was working to do. The scene looked very much like the one from Fiddler on the Roof, but the outcome was different. Mrs. Dewey threw a chubby, middle-aged arm around her husband and planted a passionate kiss on his mouth saying, "You are all the man I ever wanted and all the love to go with it." One can tell from the furnishings around them, that life has not been easy - though not desperately difficult either - but, Mrs. Dewey hadn't expected ease, nor timelessness, nor perfection and she is happy still.

Perhaps, this is where we find our greatest lesson. Life is work and pain and joy and bliss and tears and struggles. If we are thankful, living in each moment - one at a time - our disappointments will be few and we will be able to bear the weight of it all together.

The October Palace (1994)

In here collection, The October Palace, Jane Hirshfield weaves active, beautiful imagery like breath - expanding outward in the chest, expelled into the wide world, and the pulled back in again. The poem titled "Leaving the October Palace" speaks of returning. That the leaving part of a journey is never really talked about, the return is the only focus:

In Ancient Japan, to travel
meant always away --
toward the capital, one spoke only of return.
And these falling needles and leaves speak of return,
their long labors of green tired finally into gold,
the desire that remembered them into place
prepared at last to let go.
Though not for want of faithfulness --
all that once followed the sun still follows it now,
as it turns away.
The courtiers assemble their carriages, fold up their robes.
By daybreak, the soundless mountains bow under snow.

This expansion of ripples outward toward the edges followed by a returning to the center was the first thing I noted in her poems. Instead of condensing one image to its minutest part, Hirshfield breaks the analogy wide open. While doing so, she chooses repetitive diction, altering the words like a camera lens capturing every angle or like Henry James' "many windows" perspectives in his stories. This was, at first, difficult for me to swall because I don't like to repeat many words within a poem and rarely use a refrain. Hirshfield's diction, though, was not a refrain. In reading the poems out loud, I found that it not only served as a method to imbue the poem with rhythm, but the alliteration and repitition first evoked the image and then pressed it into my sight as if forcing me to see it before moving on.

I looked forward to many rambles through words with Jane.